Few famous quotes drive me as mad as “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” It’s not that the line (which originated from a 1957 issue of Reader’s Digest, but was popularized by John Lennon decades later) is an eye-rolling cliché that’s since been slapped onto a billion novelty mugs. It’s more that it’s so regrettably true that it’s impossible to dispute a genuine bit of wisdom that has since been reduced to fodder for my aunt’s Facebook posts.
No one knows that better than Alfred, the star of Forever Ago, a new narrative adventure game published by Annapurna Interactive. The aging grouch at the center of developer Third Shift’s long-delayed debut has already lived a long life full of foiled plans by the time we join him on a grief-stricken road trip. Flashbacks between pit stops paint a picture of a man who has experienced both extremes of the fate spectrum, in a long life rerouted by unexpected rainstorms and engine failures alike.
Third Shift embraces every twist and turn in a sincere narrative adventure that fits a little too snugly into Annapurna’s growing catalog of interactive tear-jerkers. With its Hallmark nostalgia and underexplored gameplay, Forever Ago does little to elevate a run-of-the-mill story of loss and memory that telegraphs exactly where it’s headed too early. But like an enduring cliché, Alfred’s story doles out enough earnest wisdom to earn a bit of sentimentality.
Forever Ago begins through the lens of a camera. Two young lovers, Alfred and Audrey, set out on an adventurous hike together. They snap pictures of one another along the way, destined to be forever preserved in a kind of photo album that’s since been driven to extinction by digital media. Flash forward many decades later, and the once-sprightly Alfred is now a white-haired man behind the wheel of an empty RV. If you haven’t put two and two together yet, you will by the time he walks into a convenience store and sees a leaflet about grief pinned up on a corkboard. I’m not sure if Third Shift intends for Alfred’s journey to be a mystery, but it’s obvious enough from the jump that I can’t imagine any of its twists will surprise players.
Alfred is in the midst of a lonely road trip where he intends to revisit him and Audrey’s old date spots and recreate their memories. For players, that mostly just means walking around a handful of neatly-designed locations, snapping optional photos that can be placed in your journal, and reconstructing the occasional memory by finding scattered flower petals. There’s a whisper of puzzling here and there, but Forever Ago mostly sticks to the same cinematic playbook as Mixtape. That’s fine considering its tight three-hour length, but it’s a shame that Third Shift doesn’t find some clever ways to use Alfred’s camera or RV to reinforce its story.
Forever Ago might not have the strength to penetrate your hardened heart.
Forever Ago is instead focused on thematic threads that take Alfred down a highway of grief, healing, and self-discovery. There are hits and misses in a glovebox filled with loose musings. Forever Ago is at its least successful when it’s playing into “back in my day” rants that make Alfred feel like a young person’s idea of an old man. At his first stop, Alfred butts heads with a young convenience store cashier who obnoxiously declares that he’s a vegan, and says lines like “hashtag van life!” — painful reminders that Forever Ago was first announced in 2020.
Third Shift aims for timely social commentary, but it sometimes winds up in eye-roll territory instead. One pivotal stop of Alfred’s trip takes him to a once-quaint diner that has since been transformed into a sterile franchise store. He gets into a spat with his waitress when he’s informed that he can only sit in his favorite booth if he signs up for a membership that comes with exclusive seating benefits. That thread doesn’t really go anywhere profound; it’s just an excuse for Alfred to wax nostalgic about how much better life was in the 1980s. He eventually comes to embrace parts of his changing world, insofar as he learns what a selfie is, but moments like these mostly play as cheap laughs that turn Alfred into a one-dimensional crank.
More compelling is when Forever Ago focuses on the chance events that shaped, and continue to shape, Alfred’s life. A surprise storm spoiling a big moment only to create a more memorable one. A run-in with a stray dog turning into a lasting companionship. A broken down car inadvertently taking Alfred exactly where he needs to be in order to heal. These tender vignettes make a convincing case for life’s randomness being something to embrace rather than curse. And that’s sold by a sympathetic Alfred, whose connections with strangers along his journey help him discover new memories rather than living in old photographs.
On the flip side, Forever Ago reminds us that the universe isn’t always so kind; everything may happen for a reason, but those reasons aren’t always in our favor. That’s where the story teeters into a level of melodrama that tries a little too hard to get the waterworks going. There’s little subtlety to be found in a game that shouts out every quiet detail of the story, and then practically embroiders its wise reassurances onto hoops for you. If you have a low tolerance for sentimentality, Forever Ago might not have the strength to penetrate your hardened heart.
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And yet, even though I could see Forever Ago’s obvious endpoint coming, even though I find its sentimental presentation to be grating overall, it still got me just enough where it mattered. I’ve walked away from it with the same feeling I have reading that overplayed Reader’s Digest quote. Yes, it’s all very corny. But it’s hard to dismiss what Forever Ago so sincerely hopes to communicate through Alfred. Sometimes it’s so easy to hyper-fixate on our foiled plans that it’s hard to step back and appreciate the sometimes wonderful detours fate took us on instead. Amid the pain and sorrow of Alfred’s lonely road trip, there’s a hopeful story of a man discovering the vibrant life he always had for the first time.
Forever Ago will be released Oct. 8 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Steam Deck using a prerelease download code provided by Annapurna Interactive. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.